Jeff Sessions: I'm 'amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific' can block Trump's travel order

U.S.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks in front of a portrait of
former U.S. President Andrew Jackson after being sworn-in in the
Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., February 9,
2017.REUTERS/Kevin
Lamarque

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday slammed a Hawaii
judge who placed a nationwide block on President Donald Trump's
executive order banning travel from six majority-Muslim
countries.

"I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the
Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United
States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and
Constitutional power," Sessions said on "The Mark Levin Show," in
comments first
reported by CNN.

Sessions said judges shouldn't get to "psychoanalyze" Trump to
determine whether his executive orders are lawful.

"It's either lawful or it's not," he said.

The Hawaii judge, Derrick Watson, had granted a
temporary restraining order on Trump's revised travel
ban in March, just hours before the federal government was set to
begin enforcing it. Later that month, Watson
extended his order blocking the ban.

Sessions said many of the judges who have ruled on Trump's
executive orders have come up with "really weird
interpretations." He praised conservative judges such as Supreme
Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and his predecessor, Justice Antonin
Scalia, who Sessions said honor the law and "don't try to remake
it as they'd like it to be."

"We've got cases moving in the very, very liberal 9th Circuit,
who — they've been hostile to the order," Sessions said,
referring to the judges on the federal appeals court who blocked
the original travel ban Trump signed in January.

"We are confident that the president will prevail on appeal
and particularly in the Supreme Court, if not the 9th Circuit. So
this is a huge matter," Sessions said.

A Justice Department spokesman later defended Sessions'
remarks:

"Hawaii is, in fact, an island in the Pacific — a beautiful one
where the Attorney General's granddaughter was born," he said.

"The point, however, is that there is a problem when a flawed
opinion by a single judge can block the President's lawful
exercise of authority to keep the entire country safe."